Peter Gingold was born on 8 March 1916 in Aschaffenburg, Germany, into a Jewish family of Polish origin. His father worked as a tailor. From 1922, the family lived in Frankfurt am Main, where Gingold attended a Jewish primary school. In 1930, he began a commercial apprenticeship in a music wholesale business and joined the youth section of a trade union. In 1931, he became a member of the Communist Youth League of Germany.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Gingold became involved in illegal resistance activity. His parents and siblings emigrated to France in May 1933, but he was arrested during an SA raid in June and imprisoned for several months. After his release, he was ordered to leave Germany and joined his family in Paris later that year.

In France, Gingold worked for the German-language anti-fascist newspaper Pariser Tageblatt. He took part in the founding of the Free German Youth in Paris in 1936 and joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1937. In January 1940, he married Ettie Stein-Haller. In May 1940, he was interned by the French authorities as a stateless person of German origin. He returned to Paris in autumn 1940.

During the occupation, Gingold joined the Resistance through the Main-d’œuvre immigrée (MOI) and the Travail allemand, a network that distributed anti-Nazi material to German soldiers, sought information from members of the Wehrmacht, and encouraged desertion. He was sent to eastern France to help organise this work. In 1942, his brother Leo Gingold and his sister Dora Buchband were arrested and deported to Auschwitz.

In February 1943, Gingold was arrested by the Gestapo in Dijon while serving as a liaison between the leadership and local militants of the Travail allemand. He was interrogated and tortured for several weeks, then transferred to Paris. In April 1943, he managed to escape and later resumed resistance activity.

With Otto Niebergall, he joined the Comité Allemagne libre pour l’Ouest (CALPO). In August 1944, Gingold took part in the uprising for the liberation of Paris within the Forces françaises de l’intérieur (FFI). He was then sent as a CALPO delegate to Lorraine with the 1st Paris Regiment during the Battle of Metz. In spring 1945, he joined Italian partisans as a front delegate and witnessed the Liberation in Turin.

After the war, Gingold settled in Frankfurt am Main with his family and continued his political activity. He died there on 29 October 2006 and was buried in Paris.